


Grey

by draculard



Category: Beijing Comrades - Bei Tong, 蓝宇 | Lan Yu (2001)
Genre: Closeted Gay Character, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21873862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: His wife doesn't believe him when he says Beijing is colder than Vancouver.
Relationships: Lan Yu/Chen Handong
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	Grey

His wife doesn’t believe him when he says Beijing is colder than Vancouver. She says nothing is colder than Canada; besides, though she’ll never admit it, he knows she thinks all of China is hot like Sichuan. 

He leaves the house in December wearing a t-shirt and a windbreaker and listens to her shouting after him —  _ “You’re not really wearing that! Handong! Come back and put on a coat!” _ — and he remembers Lan Yu in his thin white jacket, whipped by the cold winter wind, trying not to shiver as he got into Handong’s car. 

_ It was my nicest jacket, _ Lan Yu told him before he died. _ I always wore it when I went to see you. _

Gritting his teeth, blinking furiously, Chen Handong begins his brisk morning walk to work.

* * *

He sees Lan Yu’s ghost every day.

There’s no shortage of Chinese immigrants in Vancouver. He sees a young man, dark-haired and slim, from a distance and his heart leaps and he does one of two things:

Some days he keeps walking; he allows his feet to bring him closer and closer to the ghost until the handsome features dissolve into something ordinary, someone unfamiliar.

Some days he turns away and lets the ghost remain a ghost.

He sees Lan Yu in the bedroom, too, and every time he walks to the park alone, he sees Lan Yu’s ghost peering at him from behind the trees. He glances up and sees the grey sky over Vancouver, remembers the day he lay on the grass with his shoulder touching Lan Yu’s, with their fingers intertwined, with the sky above them clear and cloudless, so far from the city that it was clear of smog.

His fingers twitch.

For a moment, he feels someone’s hand in his. 

* * *

“You miss it,” his wife says, and Handong smiles at her, cocks his head. “Beijing,” she clarifies.

He looks away.

“You miss the weather,” his wife says. “Don’t you? You miss the cold?”

He looks down at his hands, laid flat against the kitchen table, at the pale gold ring circling his finger and marking him as a married man. He remembers the broken heater in Lan Yu’s apartment and how it infuriated him to wear a down coat in his own home, how they shivered beneath the blankets until their body heat made the bed warm.

“I like Vancouver,” he says by way of answer, and he smiles again, lips twitching. It feels painful, like freshly-cut skin being stretched apart. 

After a long, uncertain moment, his wife smiles back. 


End file.
